


Waterlogged

by kateandbarrel



Series: Keywords Series [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-01
Updated: 2011-04-01
Packaged: 2017-10-17 10:50:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/176098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kateandbarrel/pseuds/kateandbarrel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While on the case, Sherlock and John get trapped in a water tank and must find a way to escape.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waterlogged

**Author's Note:**

> For the 'Water' prompt for my fandomverse Big Bang. I think I may end up doing a little series of related fics for several of the prompts in this Big Bang, but this is a standalone fic.

_What a mess we’ve gotten ourselves into,_ John thought to himself, not for the first time - maybe more like the hundredth time - since falling in with one Sherlock Holmes. And not for the first time, the two of them had managed to find themselves in a spot of trouble in the pursuit of a trail of clues.

A dead lover, a pair of wellies, and an old paycheque, and Sherlock’d been able to put the pieces together and track down the murderer at a water treatment plant. Unfortunately, it had been rather dark inside the plant at 3 in the morning, and the man they were chasing knew the terrain quite a bit better than John and Sherlock. He’d managed to get the jump on them and knock them into a water tank. Which was half full of water. And only had one door, several feet above their heads, in the roof of the tank.

“Are you alright, John?” Sherlock asked after they’d splashed down.

John spit out the water that had made its way into his mouth.. “Who, me? Oh, great. Just going for a dip!”

“We fell quite a few feet. I can’t reach the hatch. Feel around the walls for a ladder,” Sherlock instructed and moved off in the dark.

John kicked his legs steadily to keep his head up as he moved to one side of the tank. If he sunk down a bit, his feet could touch the bottom of the tank, but then his mouth was underwater. They’d only been in there a couple minutes and already he could feel his legs getting tired from the effort of keeping him afloat. He’s never been a keen swimmer.

John felt the walls as he moved, bobbing up and down, but all he could feel was rusty metal. No ladder.

“Anything?” Sherlock asked impatiently, and John openly rolled his eyes, knowing he couldn’t be seen doing it. As much as he’d grown to tolerate - John mentally stopped himself from using a more consequence-heavy word, like _adore, cherish, delight in_ \- Sherlock, he still had a knack of being frustrating at all the wrong moments.

“Damp, rust, and more damp, but no ladder, no.” John heard Sherlock moving through the water, until he caught up with John, having done a full circuit.

There was silence for a few moments, the only sounds of water splashing slightly around their bodies.

“This is a rather poorly designed storage tank.” Sherlock’s voice was laced with amusement.

John spit out some more water that had gone into his mouth after dipping slightly too low. “Glad this is funny to you.” His calves were burning slightly, and the water continually invading his mouth and nose was grating on him. “I hate swimming. How are you getting on, Sherlock?”

“Hmm? Oh, fine. I don’t need to swim. My feet touch the bottom.”

John snorted. “You bloody _tall_ bastard.”

“Genetics. My father was quite tall.” The water rippled and Sherlock’s voice sounded closer. John wished he could see Sherlock’s eyes. They always looked nice when they turned in his direction. “You, however, are shorter than average. Did your mother drink a lot of caffeine while pregnant? Perhaps smoke? Take recreational drugs?”

“Not quite, but thanks for the accusations against my mother. I’m afraid my height’s due to genetics as well.”

“I see,” Sherlock remarked. “I should like to meet them someday.”

John sputtered. “You want to meet my parents?”

“They produced you.” John could feel Sherlock’s shrug, as he was only a few inches away. “Gathering data to understand you better is never a bad thing.”

John had no response to that. The idea that Sherlock enjoyed _gathering data_ on him put a small ball of heat in his stomach. His legs stopped listening to his commands momentarily as he was distracted, and he dipped below the water again.

“How are your legs? You’re not as quick to resurface as you were.”

“Is that _concern_?” John couldn’t help but ask.

“If you die, who will write about my brilliant work on this case?” Sherlock paused a split second. “On second thought, don’t write about this part. It’s a bit of a blight on my record.”

John grinned. “My blog, my decision, and this is most _definitely_ going into the write-up. The Case of the Plotting Plant Worker, in which the cleverest of the clever, Sherlock Holmes, was tripped into a hole and shut in the dark.” He spit out a stream of water in Sherlock’s direction.

“You do that, and I’ll burn your favorite jumper,” Sherlock bit out. “The _striped_ one.”

“You’re such a child sometimes!” John laughed, but immediately regretted it as he inhaled water through his nose and started a coughing fit.

“You didn’t answer my question,” Sherlock said once John’s coughing had passed. “Your legs?”

“Well, let’s see Sherlock. I’ve been awake for 36 hours now, running around London and subsisting largely on tea, and now I’ve been treading water for a solid twenty minutes. What do you think?”

“I think we should hasten our attempts to escape.”

“I texted Lestrade before we left - oh bloody hell, my phone!” John grabbed for his phone in his pocket and pulled it out, desperately pushing the buttons, but nothing happened.

“Our phones were obviously destroyed the moment we fell into this tank,” Sherlock said in that airy tone he had when pointing out something he thought John should have cottoned on to already.

John cursed and shoved the phone back into his pocket. “Lestrade will be worried when he doesn’t hear from either of us again. He’ll come looking.”

“Probably not for at least another hour. And that’s assuming we would be able to hear them outside of the tank, and whether they think to check inside the _dozens_ of potential hiding places in this plant.”

John sighed. “Why do you always have to be so right all the time? Nevermind, don’t answer that. Do we have a plan then?”

“We do.” Sherlock moved closer, his breath moving in warm puffs across John’s face. The ball of warmth in John’s stomach flared up again. “You’ve got to get on my shoulders.”

“I - what?”

“I’ll go under the water, you sit on my shoulders, and then I’ll push you up. Judging by the echoes in here, the roof of the tank is about five feet above us. You should be able to reach.”

John was dubious of this plan, but Sherlock generally knew what he was talking about, and it was better than treading water anyway. “Let’s go for it then.”

“Get ready,” was all Sherlock said before taking a breath and disappearing below the water.

Sherlock’s hands grabbed at John’s legs, pulling them over Sherlock’s shoulders, and John steadied himself against the wall of the tank as Sherlock stood up.

Sherlock put a hand on each of John’s thighs to keep him steady, and John tried very hard to think about anything other than that fact, than of the warmth seeping through his soggy jeans.

“Alright, John?”

“Yes, fine, fine,” John muttered, and was suddenly glad for the dark, as simply _imagining_ the sight of Sherlock’s head between his legs was distracting enough. _A bit not good John, this is not at all what you want to be thinking of right now. Concentrate!_ He forced himself to think of other things. The murderer who was undoubtedly long gone by now, of Lestrade pacing in his office waiting for a text, of Anderson and his inane remarks.

Sherlock suddenly moved away from the wall towards the center of the tank, where the hatch was. John wobbled a bit, instinctively putting a hand down on Sherlock’s head to steady himself. He got a handful of wet - _beautiful_ \- curls and jerked his hand back sharply, as if he’d touched something hot.

“John?” Sherlock asked sharply.

“Sorry,” he replied, though he wasn’t sure what he was apologizing for. Well, that was a lie, he _did_ know what he was apologizing for - mainly for having less than platonic thoughts about his friend in the middle of a serious situation - but Sherlock didn’t know that.

“Can you reach?”

John tentatively lifted a hand, and felt himself wobble again. _Christ. I have to do it. It’s necessary. For stability._ John put his other hand back on Sherlock’s head, just the tips of his fingers, as little contact as possible, just enough to steady him, and reached as high as he could. His fingers brushed metal.

“I can just about touch it!” John’s excitement temporarily erased his more illicit thoughts, and he pushed more fully on Sherlock’s head, trying to get an extra inch or two. Fingers met metal, and John pushed, lifting the hatch slightly. “I’m only moving it a little bit. We just need five more inches.”

“I’ll have to jump.”

“Wait, jump? Hold on -” He cut himself off as he felt Sherlock dip down, then up, and John extended his arm as far as he could, and it was enough - the hatch popped open, the loud bang of it hitting the outside of the tank reverberating inside it. Unfortunately, John had also lost his balance with that, and fell into the water once more.

“Oh hell, I can’t wait until we get out of here,” John griped once he’d resurfaced.

“Agreed.”

It was a quick matter of repeating the procedure of getting atop Sherlock’s shoulders - John too excited about getting out of the tank to let his thoughts wander too much - and John was able to gain purchase on the lip of the hatch opening and pull himself up. He laid on the top of the tank, breathing heavily, drenched head to toe.

“No time to dawdle, John!” Sherlock shouted from inside the tank.

John laughed, it tinged somewhat with hysteria. “Yes, dawdling, that’s exactly what I was doing. Not catching my breath after a bout of physical exertion or anything.” But he pulled himself up regardless, intent to not let Sherlock stay stuck down there longer than he had to. “I’ll just go find something to pull you up.”

John located a rollaway ladder on a wall fairly quickly - probably its purpose was for descending into those very tanks - and after Sherlock was up, they made their way out of the plant.

Outside, the air was cool, and it made John’s skin break out in goose flesh. “What now?”

“Now, John, we catch a murderer.”

“We still don’t know who he is.”

“Don’t we?” Sherlock attempted what would normally be a very smug grin, but the effect was dampened somewhat by the wet hair hanging limply over his forehead.

John laughed, and Sherlock’s expression changed immediately to one of confusion.

“What?” Sherlock demanded.

“Nothing. It’s just, you’re” - _adorable_ \- “very wet.”

“Well, yes, we were just in a tank of water. Do keep up, John.”

John ignored the barb, Sherlock’s insults barely registering in his brain anymore. “So you’ve solved the case then?”

The grin returned. “The instant we hit the water, of course.”

“Of course,” John teased, but he marveled inwardly all the same. Only Sherlock Holmes could solve a case while falling into a tank of water.

“No time to waste. The killer is currently on his way to the train station, where he will attempt to board a train for Paris.”

And with that, Sherlock was off, moving with purpose, and John smiled as he ran after him.


End file.
